Peter Guralnick is a writer of some of the finest books on popular music – I could just as easily have recommended “Feel Like Going Home” and “Lost Highway”, profiles of some of the most interesting musicians in American popular music. This one is subtitled ‘Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom’, which aptly sums up the book’s heart.
“Sweet Soul Music” is elegantly written, displaying a real passion for the music on every page. It’s more a narrative than his previous books (which were profile based). It’s about a music that developed out of a particular time and a set of circumstances that are unlikely to be repeated. Broadly it covers the southern soul music that grew out of the success of artists such as Ray Charles and reached its heyday in the mid to late 1960s. One of the many interesting facts that emerge in the book is that virtually every southern soul singer of merit cited Sam Cooke as a role model – reason enough for him to be included in any primer.
The book is also about the business of music as well as the music itself and it offers fascinating insights into the creation of Atlantic, Stax and the development of the highly influential Muscle Shoals Sound. In so doing, Guralnick shows the music to be a combination of art and commerce, where the music reached its peak when the marriage was closest. But it was always commerce, which is the context in which labels like Atlantic had to see the music in order to survive.
It is also painstakingly researched and it was apparently five years in preparation – the research paid dividends and the end product offers a richly detailed history and numerous first person accounts from the people who made it happen. Music and the written word rarely gel as well as this but then writing rarely gets this good! As Elvis Costello says in his own recommendation “Buy this book! In years to come it will seem like a bargain compared with all the wonderful records which you will have to buy after reading the vivid accounts of Sweet Soul Music”
(Excellent archive photos as well!!)
Great recommendation. IMO one of the best books ever produced about soul music. I’ve always liked pretty much everything that Guralnick has written, but for some reason I could never get on with his biography of Sam Cooke. Tried to finish it on numerous occasions, always failed and can’t put my finger on why. But “Sweet Soul Music” is still a wonderful intro to soul music